I just bought a barely used panasonic toughbook. The owner used it for his business and it is loaded with security software which keeps me from logging into all the system files and cleaning it up. For example, his screen background logo is locked in and I'm not able to change any settings. I've deleted some hardware / software piecemeal but this just isn't a good use of my time. How can I completely wipe this thing and install my own load / programs (windows xp, office, etc), being confident that nothing remains? Thanks for anybody's help.

Hey there, I'm assuming you have an XP setup disk?

Boot from the XP set up disk and you should be able to format and reinstall from there.

Prehaps a little overkill but if you wanna go way over the top you could try something like DBAN which will securely wipe everything. and then use your XP set up cd to format and install.

Hope this helps.

yeah, dban's a whale of a tool in a very small package. We use it here at work for machines that we donate. Shy of physically shredding the device, it's about as secure as you'll get.

And it's free.

but if you aren't worried about data, then as lebowski pointed out, it's quicker just to reformat.